Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. His latest book is The Fix: How addiction is taking over your world. He also writes about classical music for The Spectator.

Paul Ryan, Maria Callas and the splendour of custard

Paul Ryan: a faithful Catholic, not a cafeteria one (Photo: AFP/Getty)

From Saturday's Daily Telegraph

So a US presidential candidate who believes that Jesus visited America has picked as his running mate a man who believes that he eats the body of Jesus in the form of a small white wafer. To a visitor from Mars, Catholicism would seem every bit as strange as Mormonism. More to the point, not long ago Bible Belt Christians found transubstantiation as repugnant as The Book of Mormon. So the fact that they’re pleased by Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan tells us that the religious geography of America is changing.

The interesting thing about Ryan’s Catholicism is that he takes it seriously. JFK, Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, Joe Biden – this isn’t just a list of Democrats, it’s a list of “cafeteria Catholics”. That’s the name for people who hover over the buffet of the Catechism selecting only the tastiest morsels. In particular, Senators Kennedy, Kerry and Biden were expert at finessing their voting record on abortion so they could placate feminists while still queuing up to receive Communion during election campaigns.

In contrast, the congressman from Wisconsin has a rock-solid record of voting in line with Vatican teaching. That’s why Romney introduced Ryan as a “faithful” Catholic.

The GOP has become a natural home for devout cradle Catholics such as Paul Ryan. He draws many of his ideas from a flourishing of Right-wing Catholic thought whose seeds were sown in the Fifties by William F Buckley. Ryan isn’t an intellectual: no one who gushes about Ayn Rand fits into that category. But he’s typical of Mass-going Catholics alienated by the Democrats’ increasingly gruesome embracing of “abortion rights”.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has become strangely attractive to educated conservative Protestants. One reason is that mainline denominations such as the Episcopalians have been infected by a feelgood liberalism that demonstrates all the intellectual rigour of sixth-formers sharing a spliff. US Catholics were heading in that direction, too, but have been yanked back towards orthodoxy by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. This has impressed non-Catholics. The result has been a stream of conversions, not only by leading pastors such as the late Richard Neuhaus but also by politicians such as Jeb Bush and (embarrassingly) Newt Gingrich.

Perhaps more significantly, years of joint campaigning on sexual morality has persuaded many Protestant evangelicals that Catholics are Christians after all. This realignment was first described by the sociologist James Davison Hunter in his book Culture Wars: the Struggle to Define America (1991). He saw conservative Protestants, Catholics and Jews joining forces, and their liberal counterparts doing likewise – that is, a fault line running through faith groups rather than between them.

Hunter’s argument works better for conservatives than their opponents. Two decades on, progressive religion of all varieties is now so doddery that it might as well not exist. Instead, most liberals have embraced a vague, narcissistic “spirituality” or, in the case of young people, atheism.

Barack Obama may or may not have religious beliefs – your guess is as good as mine – but he runs a truly secular administration. Now it’s being tested by a Republican ticket headed by two men who sign up to everything their respective churches teach.

It’s true that, given the power of swing voters, the outcome will probably be determined by the economy. Even so, this is arguably the first presidential election that pits religious against post-religious America. What a fascinating contest it is shaping up to be.

Caruso had his own smoking aria

Bradley Wiggins was photographed this week puffing happily on a cigarette. I can’t say I’m surprised. Tobacco has a strange allure for the last people you’d expect to indulge: doctors (“You’ve got to die of something,” says my GP friend), sportsmen and opera singers.

The possessors of the two most famous voices in operatic history were both smokers. Maria Callas made no secret of it: she didn’t mind being photographed with a fag in her hand. And Enrico Caruso chugged his way through two packets of Egyptian cigarettes a day. No wonder his recording of Celeste Aida has such an authentic ring to it.

The British love affair with custard dates back centuries; it’s a passion that unites our aristocracy and working classes – and is shared by our Prime Minister.

Even at Eton, a source tells me, young Dave was eager to assist kitchen staff in custard-tasting sessions “to make sure it was creamy and nourishing enough”.

Note to hosts: there’s no need to worry if you see the PM surreptitiously sniffing the air as you serve him a steaming traditional pud. “Not even Ted Heath had such a fine nose for a good custard,” says my informant admiringly.

An untold story for BBC viewers

I’m looking forward to the historian Tom Holland’s documentary about the origins of Islam. Is it on the BBC? Don’t be silly. Holland will explore the underground debate surrounding Mohammed. Auntie doesn’t go there. Holland’s film, entitled Islam: The Untold Story, will be shown by Channel 4 on August 28.

According to the programme makers, “Tom explores the more radical notions thrown up by the paradigm shift affecting the study of early Islam. These include the possibility that Mohammed did not come from present-day Mecca, and that rather than Islam inspiring the Arab conquests, it was the Arab conquests that gave birth to Islam.”

Will Karen Armstrong be watching? She’s not a Muslim but, rather, one of Islam’s professional sycophants. Her own hagiography of the Prophet was written, as she modestly put it, as a “gift to the Muslim people”. Something tells me she won’t like this documentary one little bit.

Things aren’t that bad in Ambridge

I don’t understand this fuss about histrionic Archers storylines. Staff at a certain Midlands motel endured far worse things in the Sixties and Seventies. I’m reading a synopsis of Crossroads episodes which veers from small-scale drama (“Amy Turtle and Edith Tatum end their feud, while Wilf Harvey finds himself a new dancing partner”) to outright crisis (“A mentally ill Midlander suggests to motel staff that he has planted a bomb in the kitchen”). Most dramatic of all: “The day before Bonfire Night sees the Crossroads Motel engulfed in flames as an inferno takes hold. Jill Harvey is concerned that Meg Mortimer, her mother, is in the blazing building.” Don’t you love that “concerned”?